In January, Paisley teamed up with artist Rob Hendon to spray paint a mural on a Bridgestone Arena wall in honor of Nashville's beloved hockey team, the Predators. The finished product reflects Paisley's own personality as much as it does the spirit of Nashville: A saber-toothed cat (the Predators' logo) chomps down on an acoustic guitar, flanked by a gigantic catfish, a white cowboy hat and the word "Smashville."

"I came up with the rough idea of the Predator logo biting a guitar," Paisley explained in a recent press conference. "He drew his guitar, and I did this catfish -- you know we like our catfish in this town -- and then we incorporated a bunch of other fun stuff."

It wasn't Paisley's first attempt at graffiti art, though: "I'd always painted and drawn and stuff, but more recently I got into walls," he recalls. "At my house, there was this really boring, concrete wall with nothing on it. I thought, 'Heck with this!' I bought a bunch of spray paint and went to town, and covered the whole wall within a couple of days. It was surprisingly faster than I thought it would be."

The country star believes that his musical talent and his inclination towards the visual arts come from similar creative places: "It's exactly the same muscle," Paisley says. "Writing a song, doing a painting, coming up with a concept for a video or a TV commercial -- it's all exactly the same."

"It's borne out of a blank canvas," he adds. "It's the idea of thinking, 'What can we put on here to grab attention and entertain?'"